Quite possibly the most disappointing movie of 2005

Rating: 4/10 (11 January 2006)

The special features on the DVD of The Island include some interesting insight from one of the technicians on the set. He casually looks into the camera and says, "We don't read the script, we just show up for the toys." I suspect that he does not simply speak for himself; I only wonder how many of the filmmakers shared the same situation. After sitting through the entire film, I imagine that the answer to my question is probably a very large number. When watching films like this, I often get the impression that the filmmakers were in fact a large group of 12 year old boys trapped inside older men's bodies, who were given an enormous amount of "toys" (ie explosives, helicopters, $600,000 cameras, etc.) to go out and play with.
The Island is another unfortunate example of what science fiction has become to Hollywood with the evolution of special effects, massive budgets, and pyrotechnics. For a moment, let me address the fact that much of today's special effects were born in the studios of classic science fiction films  films that actually used the effects to tell wonderful, intriguing, innovative stories. The ingenuity of the filmmaker's methods to create ways to show some remarkable shots reflected the same ingenuity of the story it told. Those films  like 2001, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Contact, and Solaris  all took us to places we had never been, but could still believe in and become intrigued by. It gave us the opportunity to explore the part of our minds that lets us know the experience of wonder, to imagine places and things greater than ourselves. There was brilliance behind every one of those films, and they could have started a genre that, if treated properly, could have created one of the most original art forms of our time. It could have created a bridge between the intellect of science and the emotion of art, two things that currently seem so far apart that they just might have come from opposite ends of the universe. Alas, those few select films exist as the pariahs of cinema, treasured by many of us, but never enough to stir Big Hollywood into further exploring their true intellect.
The Island is a perfect example of the resulting by-product. Ewan McGregor stars as Lincoln Echo Six, alongside Scarlet Johansson as Jordan Two Delta, who live in the confinement of some unknown facility. The facility is a futuristic version of a frighteningly socialist institution, where a population of people  all dressed the same and walking in single file lines  are told what to eat, when to sleep, what to do for work, and not to get too close to their fellow "inmates." They are told they are the survivors of a contaminated world, which is uninhabitable, save for a paradisal island. Every night there is a lottery, and the inmates are made to believe that the winner of the lottery gets to head off to the splendor of the island. Their actual purpose and where they actually go is revealed once they win, but Lincoln Echo Six discovers this on his own, and he is forced into action when his forbidden interest Jordan Two Delta suddenly wins the lottery.
As its synopsis may sound, The Island starts out as a captivating and intriguing film  one that sets up a philosophical/moral dilemma. This setup sets it aside from other kinds of sci- fi that work by focusing on the action. Movies like that are Jurassic Park and Terminator 2, which understood their value and their opportunity to earn thrills and embrace the excitement of a big blockbuster. The situation in The Island, however, asks us to think about a deeper question than those films. It doesn't just use science to create a situation where all hell can break loose or where people can learn kung-fu in 10 seconds. Instead, it uses science in such a way that we empathize with its characters because they are the victims of a morally corrupt futuristic practice. Because of that, when (about a third of the way through the film) Michael Bay basically says "screw the story, let's blow stuff up," I felt cheated.
This is perhaps the most upsetting part of the film. The Island quickly falls victim to an even more upsetting trend in modern sci-fi  that is, it touches base with a really great idea, and then destroys it. Like John Woo's Paycheck and the Wachowski brothers' Matrix sequels, The Island's story never garners enough respect from its filmmakers to truly explore its themes, to immerse its characters in them to discover how they might affect the human mind. Instead, The Island quickly turns on itself. It almost completely disregards the fascination set up by its story, and instead decides to exploit it for just about every crash, explosion, fight, and cheesy line possible.
Like Paycheck, The Island could have been great. Some people were pleased with the overall experience of the film, having received a good dose of the action/sci-fi hybrid. I, however, lament yet again the current status of a genre that has such great potential. Is all hope lost? I certainly hope not, and I can't help but feel a swelling of hope when I see the preview for something like A Scanner Darkly. Even if we only receive a brilliant sci-fi film every 10 years, the ideas in one of those films might inspire enough thought to withstand the wait. Still, it'd be nice to not have to wait that long. The Island showed promise, but then failed miserably.